Sad day

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: private collection.

Toyen created this painting in the sad for her 1942, after the death of Styrsky and became the last painting of the series of her works of the period of the Second World War. The author never exhibited this work, brought it to France, where she emigrated in 1947; later she gave it to the Sotheby’s auction house for sale. The painting, with its lifeless landscape and high night sky, shows a head covered with a white cloth in the foreground, as if a man, having clasped it with his hands, closed himself from thoughts. Two other plot elements are mushrooms, the look of which seems to be ominous. The painting, according to contemporary art historians, is the pearl of modern art. It is often exhibited and reproduced.